(Untitled)

[veazey21]

I've been thinking too much lately, and a lot of it has been about tech news.  I have a rant bouncing around in my head, but not enough time to get it written down before I have to be somewhere, so I'll just throw up something I found this morning to tide you over if you're one of the two or three people who read my journal partly for its tech

Comments

[dudeitsawesome]

Haha. I run Adblock Plus. I love it. And you're right -- I never click on banner ads anyway.

[veazey21]

Adblock Plus just seems to be unnecessarily complex to me. Like, if you can block an entire subdomain with a wild card (*) in the URL, why not just carry that functionality over? That way, no matter what it is, if it comes from "ads.doubleclick.net" or "ads.doubleclick.com," it never even arrives at my computer.

Last time I tried to use Adblock Plus, it didn't seem to support that integral function.

[brighty18]

I have that same Adblock.

Interesting point about it being like the Neilson ratings (considering virtually everyone records and fast forward through commercials.) I rarely if ever click on banners, but I find many ads really intrusive and annoying to the point that even if I desperately needed insurance or to contact an old high school friend I would NEVER choose to go through those services.

[veazey21]

I'm actually much the same way. Terrible ads and commercials help me decide which services not to patronize much more than good ads help me with the opposite. And there's a lot more terrible banners and pop-overs than there are good ones.

[brighty18]

"And there's a lot more terrible banners and pop-overs than there are good ones."

Totally. Some of the ones that bother me the most are for insurance. Those weird, elongated animals and whatnot whose bodies are made up of all 50 states? CREEPY! Digger the dermatophyte (who constantly seems to appear on ads on weather.com also bugs the CRAP out of me.

[veazey21]

He has shown up at least one too many times if you've memorized his name.

[yattaboe]

LULZ about advertising, there's not even any clear cut conclusions from research that advertising on TV has any direct or huge effect on people... just that it has 'some' effect, in some mysterious way, and in the meantime products cost us more, of course, to help pay for all those lovely shiny insults the TV flings at us whenever it's on. One of my recent favorites is whoever is doing the "people are smart" thing. Thanks, corporation. Your validation means a lot. Here I thought you guyz were the only smarties, LOL! (bouncy happy emoticon here)

[veazey21]

Oh, for the days when the only commercials were friendly baritone voices on the radio telling us that Rexall Pharmacies had the lowest prices in town. Only with the truth in advertising laws still in place.

choir(see also: preaching to)

[radiantthought]

Slashdot had some great comments on this. The best one I heard explained that this is not illegal. The advertisers don't have any god-given right to force their ads upon us. That would be like saying that if you go into wal-mart and walk around but never buy anything that you stole from wal-mart... which anyone with half a brain can understand is completely ludicrous. Not to mention the fact that people who use ad blocking software are annoyed by ads and wouldn't click on them if they could see them. AND the fact that I'd guess a good 99% of web ads are based on the number of people who actually click them, not the number who see them. Thus people who don't want to see them and wouldn't click them anyhow aren't changing anything except their own personal level of annoyance.

/rant

[veazey21]

Exactly, sir!
Plus I love the Wal-Mart analogy; it fits perfectly. Too bad we can't come up with a good analogy for net neutrality.

[radiantthought]

Net neutrality is like lowering the speed limit on highways and then charging money to allow people to use special lanes which are allowed to go at a much faster speed.

[veazey21]

Except it's only the providers of the information that would be charged the exorbitant rates, in most cases. The telcos want Google, eBay, etc. to pay a premium so that their content gets served to consumers faster than other content. So if they don't pay that premium or can't afford to (in the case of small businesses and individuals), their packets get slowed down to ISDN speeds while the other stuff from the "premium partners" or whatever gets shunted into the gigabit portion of the network.

It is extortion, plain and simple.